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Satyrica

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At present on Amazon.com, there are 3 different
editions of the SATYRICON offered. They are all
excellent...I own all 3. And if permitted, I plan
to review each of the three individually. This
edition is hard to find, because of its title.
Amazon has indexed it by its title -- SATYRICA -
and thus, it does not come up on searches for
"Petronius" or "Satyricon." Which is unfortunate,
because it is probably the best of the 3 editions,
with all of its extras.
There have been many writers who have been influenced
by having read Petronius and the SATYRICON (or SATYRICA).
Some of these writers have even gone so far as to offer
their opinions about Petronius or about the SATYRICON
itself. One of the excellent features of this edition
of the SATYRICON (published by Univ. of California Press),
translated and with an "Introduction" by R. Bracht Branham
and Daniel Kinney, is the fact that in the back of the
book they include a section titled "Petronius and his
Critics." In this section, they give provocative quotes
by authors starting with John of Salisbury (12th century)
and extending up through T.S. Eliot in 1932. What they
may not have known is that Herman Melville also has
a short piece about Petronius in his novel REDBURN,
Chap. 56, in which the narrator of the novel talks about
the hands of his friend Harry Bolton and says: "It was
not as the sturdy farmer's hand of a Cincinnatus, who
followed the plough and guided the state, but it was
the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that elegant
young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead
in the forum."
The SATYRICA (or SATYRICON) contains materials which
might be considered salacious. So that warning should be
noted. Defenders of Petronius and the SATYRICON are wont
to point out that he does not seem to be presenting the
material as if he is trying to appeal to the prurient
interests of his readers, but that he is rather simply
saying "that's the kind of world that's out there, folks."
Some critics have said that Petronius is really being
an ironic satirist and is rubbing Rome's nose in its own
decadence and saying, "Look what you 'noble Romans' have
become." I would like to think that this last is the
case. He is no prude...no Puritan...but an intelligent,
elegant, ironic, poetic satirist of Rome's lifestyles
of the "wannabe" wealthy and powerful. He holds up a
wonderful satirical mirror for them to see themselves --
as only a sharp, clever, intelligent artist might
paint their portraits.
But the best "review" of Petronius among the critics
at the back of this book is that by the author J. K.
Huysmans in his work AGAINST NATURE (1884). I would
like to quote part of it as the conclusion of this
review:
"Petronius was a shrewd observer, a delicate analyst,
a marvellous painter; dispassionately, with an entire
lack of prejudice or animosity, he described the everyday
life of Rome, recording the manners and morals of his
time in the lively little chapters of the SATYRICON. Noting
what he saw as he saw it, he set forth the day-to-day
existence of the common people, with all its minor events,
its bestial incidents, its obscene antics.
* * * All this is told with extraordinary vigour and
precise colouring, in a style that makes free of every
dialect, that borrows expressions from all the languages
imported into Rome, that extends the frontiers and breaks
the fetters of the so-called Golden Age, that makes every
man talk in his own idiom .... There are lightning sketches
of all these people, sprawled round a table, exchanging the
vapid pleasantries of drunken revellers, trotting out
mawkish maxims and stupid saws, their heads turned towards
Trimalchio, who sits picking his teeth, offers the company
chamber pots, discourses on the state of his bowels,
f**ts to prove his point, and begs his guests to make
themselves at home." [asterisk "censoring" is mine]
(pp. 176-177)
Amazing insight, excellent writing, excellent book --
I will heartily recommend these qualities in this version
of the SATYRICON, and you will have to decide
for yourself whether you wish to peruse Huysmans,
or not.